Sarah Painter - The Secrets Of Ghosts

Katie readjusted her grip on her tray and forced herself to walk down the hallway. There were muffled voices from behind one of the closed doors, the muted sounds of a television from another. Katie willed her heart to stop beating quite so fast and tried to laugh at herself. She was being ridiculous. She was Katie Harper and a little cold breeze wasn’t going to make her twitchy.

The Yellow Room was the last door and she wedged the tray against her body so that she could hold it with one hand and knock with the other.

No answer.

She knocked again, and called out in a chirpy, ‘I’m here to help!’ voice: ‘Room service.’ The door wasn’t locked properly and it swung open.

Katie edged into the room, keeping her gaze lowered in case something private was happening. ‘Hello? Is everything all right? Shall I just leave the tray—?’

She caught sight of something in her peripheral vision. A man was lying on the polished hardwood floor. His tie askew.

‘Sir? Are you all right, sir? Mr Cole?’

There was something about the way the man was lying. His absolute stillness. Katie knew without touching him that his skin would be cold. In fact, cool air seemed to be spreading outwards so that Katie could feel it even where she was standing. She put the tray down on the floor with a clatter and stepped over it to kneel down next to the man. ‘Mr Cole? Can you hear me? Are you all right?’

She touched his arm then, remembering first-aid lessons at school, pressed two fingers to the side of his neck. He was cold. Really cold. Just-come-out-of-the-freezer cold. His eyes were wide open and his expression fixed in a way that Katie knew that she would never, ever forget.

The coolness travelled up her fingers from where she’d pressed them against the man’s skin and she just had time to think that he shouldn’t be that cold, that it wasn’t right, when she felt an icy stillness spread up her arm and across her chest, making her breathing suddenly slow. Soon, every part of her body was chilled and her scalp was prickling. She tried to move away, but her strength had gone. One moment she was kneeling upright next to the dead man, her hand at his neck, and the next instant she was slumped sideways and unable to move. Mr Cole’s head was uncomfortably close. Through the horrible numbing cold, she felt revulsion and fear. She wanted to move away, but couldn’t. She wanted to shut her eyes, to stop seeing his face, but she couldn’t do that either. She felt as if her eyelids were frozen in place. From her angle on the floor, Mr Cole’s face was in profile, and the terror and panic just as obvious. He looked as if his worst nightmare had risen up in front of him.

Katie felt a surge of panic. She still couldn’t move and the cold was bringing back terrible memories. Not again, she thought. Not again . There had been a time. One very bad time when she’d felt a similar draining of control. A time when she’d stumbled out in the snow, drunk and crying and something else besides. She had felt herself dissolve, her will liquid and useless, and she’d vowed never again. As the cold slowed her thoughts further, she fought against it. Imagined pinching herself, imagined the pain she’d feel, and willed it to keep her conscious and rational. She stared at the pores on Mr Cole’s face and tried to remember. She hadn’t done any magic; she was sure of that. Hadn’t tried any for months, now. The weakness was spreading. She wanted to sleep so badly, to stop thinking, and now her vision was fading. She heard a voice say, ‘Oh, Christ,’ and she thought, It’s okay, someone’s come , and the last of her strength disappeared and the world went black.

Chapter 2

Katie opened her eyes and light flooded in. A blurred circle of white gradually resolved into a face. Brown hair flopping forwards over unfamiliar features. After a moment, the nose stopped dancing, three eyes became two and the mouth pulled into a worried line. At once, she realised who was leaning over her: the good-looking wedding guest. The one she’d thought didn’t belong.

‘Oh, thank Christ,’ he said, sitting back on his heels. ‘You’re alive.’

Katie moved her head and saw that she was still lying next to the dead man. She struggled to sit up and the young guy lunged forwards. ‘You shouldn’t do that. You might have hurt your back or neck or something.’

‘I didn’t fall,’ Katie managed. Her voice hurt her head, which was already pounding. It made it difficult to think clearly. She could move, though. She stretched out an arm, flexed her fingers.

‘Look…’ he was standing up, now ‘…I’ve got to go. I’ll send someone up here.’

Katie was trying to unscramble her thoughts. She’d come in and seen the man and then she’d passed out. No, she’d knelt down and touched the man and then she’d felt very weak. She looked up, wincing as the pendant light shone too brightly into her eyes.

The good-looking man was at the door, hesitating. ‘You’re okay, now,’ he said, as if reassuring himself.

‘He isn’t,’ Katie said pointing at the man. They had to call an ambulance. He was past that, of course, but still. Suddenly, she realised she was going to be sick. She got to her feet and, the room spinning wildly, made it into the en suite to throw up in the sink.

When she came out the man had gone, but she heard footsteps in the corridor.

*

Later, she sat in the public lounge with a sweet cup of tea and a female police officer. Either an autopilot setting had kicked in, or she was still spaced from fainting, but she was calm and methodical as she told the officer what she’d seen. A second track of her mind was running its own commentary. Katie expected it to be shocked and sad and all the things she imagined to be normal human reactions, but instead it thought: Well, at least my birthday will be memorable for something .

Katie closed her eyes. She was a bad, bad person.

Jo came out of the kitchen, still in her chef’s whites, and gave her a hug. Jo nodded to the police officer, then looked into Katie’s face. ‘You okay?’

Katie nodded. ‘Just a bit of a shock. I’m fine.’

Jo squeezed her shoulder. ‘You should be at home.’ She glanced at the officer whose name Katie had already managed to forget. ‘Don’t keep her hanging about, will you? It’s not right.’

The female officer had a monotone voice, as if she were reading from an autocue and wasn’t very good at it. ‘There is a procedure that we have to follow.’

‘I’m fine,’ Katie said, before Jo could tell the police what she thought of their procedure. She rustled up a smile for Jo, who gave the officer one last long look before walking away.

‘So,’ the officer said, seemingly unaffected by Jo’s display of concern. ‘Do you remember seeing anything out of the ordinary tonight?’

‘No, nothing,’ Katie said. ‘I mean, apart from the man. Mr Cole.’

‘We’re talking to all the members of the wedding party and the staff, but is there anybody else who may have had contact with Mr or Mrs Cole this evening?’

The chicken thief. Oh, bugger. If her hunch was correct and he’d crashed the wedding, he wouldn’t be listed as a guest. Did that matter, though? She hadn’t seen him talking to Mr Cole, although he had been upstairs in the hotel, where he’d had no business to be. On the other hand, bringing him into the conversation would delay the interview and she really wanted to go home.

While she dithered, the police officer continued her list of questions. ‘Any loud disagreements, anybody acting strangely?’

‘It was a wedding,’ Katie said, wondering if her face had betrayed her. ‘Define “strange”.’

Patrick Allen strode into the room and straight up to the senior policeman who was conducting an interview at a nearby sofa. ‘I came as soon as I could. I own The Grange.’